‘Jellyfish’: Israeli film filled with moments of quiet grace

A couple of times during “Jellyfish,” you hear the classic Edith Piaf song “La Vie en Rose” sung in Hebrew. Pause for a second to consider that, and you begin to get some of the quality of this odd, quiet little movie.

“Jellyfish” is a film from Israel, but its subject is not the conflict in the Middle East. It cruises through the lives of a handful of people in Tel Aviv, finding connections and sculpting small moments of grace.

The movie, which won the prize for best debut film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007, comes from a husband-and-wife filmmaking team: Etgar Keret is an award-winning author, and Shira Geffen is a playwright and writer of children’s books. Geffen wrote this film, with the couple sharing directing duties.

“Jellyfish” is like a collection of short stories interwoven with rhyming parts. The movie begins at a wedding, and we will follow some of the people there: the bride (Noa Knoller) and groom (Michael Sandler), whose Caribbean honeymoon is scrapped when she breaks her ankle at the reception, and a catering waitress (Sarah Adler) trying to make ends meet.

The latter is taken on a semi-magical mystery tour for the weekend, when a tiny girl comes walking out of the sea and into her life, like a stray dog. This little mermaid is the movie’s most overt nod in the direction of surrealism.

We also follow the story of a Filipino maid (Ma-nenita De Latorre) hired to take care of a cranky, ailing woman. The lady disapproves of her daughter being an actress.

These lives occasionally overlap, and a few dramatic things happen. But the subject of the film seems to be the flow of life itself. The characters are carried by currents they don’t know about, even if they think they are in control of their lives.

It clocks in at a brief 78 minutes, which is somehow just exactly enough. “Jellyfish” isn’t trying to make a major statement, but it gives you that pleasant feeling that somebody out there is paying attention.